Rolf Furuli

Alleymom

The following message posted on the b-Hebrew discussion list may be of interest to JWD members.

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-hebrew/2007-March/031707.html

Mystla

I must conclude that they could be heavily doctored to an agenda that attempts to justify Jehovah's Witnesses' view and translation of
the Bible, to the point where the data would not just be deceptive, but be even totally made up.

LOL, he's got JW's pegged.

Interesting read, thanks for the link, alleymom!

Misty

Euphemism

Man, I've got to figure the feces will hit the fan on that one.

Falsifying data is a pretty serious claim to make in academic circles, and I'd be more comfortable seeing it made with some actual evidence (as opposed to evidence that Rolf lied about his publisher, which is certainly bad, but not an academic felony). Still, given the intellectually deceptive crusade that he's on--and of course, the Witnesses' hitory of deception, intellectual and otherwise--I certainly couldn't put it past him.

yesidid

Does anyone have "Scholar"s email. I am sure he would be interested.

Leolaia

It is unclear if the author knows about the NWT's pedantic rejection of the waw consecutive by using the imperfect where the perfect would be more appropriate (hence the irritating repeated use of "proceeded" with verbs in a temporal or narrative sequence). Furuli has a 2002 paper titled "The NWT's Translation of the Hebrew Verbal System with Particular Stress on Waw Consecutive" in the Your Word is Truth book (I have not had an opportunity to read it). What is noteworthy is that the 1984 NWT Reference Edition has a lengthy discussion of "Hebrew verbs indicating continuous or progressive action" which concludes: "The New World Translation has not followed the unfounded theory of Waw Consecutive when translating Hebrew verbs. This age-old theory does not convey the power and forcefulness of the Hebrew verbs in their original states (p. 1573). Note the twicefold characterization of this grammatical rule as a "theory", one which is "unfounded". Furuli in his own work aims at presenting a new "theory" intended to replace the "age-old" theory rejected by the NWT. I don't think this is a coincidence.

purplesofa

thanks for posting

Narkissos

Bttt. The whole thread is worth reading, with the following replies by Kirby, Furuli and Kummerow. (Follow the "next" buttons)

Alleymom

Here is a link for the other messages:

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-hebrew/2007-March/subject.html

Edited to add:

There are four separate threads you may want to look at:

"Hidden Agendas in Rolf's Thesis, Methods and Data"
"Verbal Aspect"
"Verbal Aspect (was Tenses - Deut 6:4)"
"Fw: Verbal Aspect (was Tenses - Deut 6:4)"

Leolaia

Rolf's reply is a pretty good one, but I thought this bit was quite interesting:

For example, it corroborates the rederings of WAYYIQTOLs in the French "La Bible traduite et présenée par André Choraqui" and the English New World Translation, but it contradicts some of the renderings of QATALs with future references in these translatons.

True....but isn't it interesting that the Society makes a point about the first one and not the second? The point is less the translation itself than the Society's explicit attempt to defend the correctness of its renderings of WAYYIQTOLs and the wrongness of alternative renderings (i.e. not converting the imperfect w-yqtl to the perfect but translating it as imperfective "he proceeded to kill"). This attempt involved a criticism of a theory of grammar, whereas the Society does not try to justify or explain its future QATAL renderings.

Rolf Furuli

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